1. “What Empire Means for Blackness on Television.” Fox’s new series has broken ratings records—and it’s also broken ground in terms of its portrayal of race, queerness, and women on television. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. (Below are thoughts from BuzzFeed staff writer Ira Madison III.)

“If there’s one positive takeaway from Jamal, it’s his introduction to mainstream black America. Part of the reason the homophobia-in-the-black-community myth persists is because of representation. We’ve seen some of television’s most popular series dealing with the gay son soap archetype, and the image of gayness and acceptance of homosexuality has permeated white culture for nearly 50 years (Susan Harris’ 1977 satirical sitcom Soap introduced one of television’s first gay characters in Jodie Dallas). Black characters who appeared on these kinds of soaps were the divas like Dominique Deveraux (Diahann Carroll’s character on Dynasty) or Wilhelmina Slater (Vanessa Williams’ character on Ugly Betty). They rarely had lives of their own. And here we are now, with Jamal fighting for his father’s dynasty. If this show had existed in the ’80s—as it should have, because black people had money in the damn ’80s too and we loved soap operas back then—I truly believe the notion of a black community being more homophobic would be retrograde. But look at Empire’s ratings. They’re huge and growing each week. In the ’80s, Dynasty was one of the highest-rated dramas on television. Jamal’s character, however I may feel about him, is important not just for our community but in the context of television history in general.”

Obnoxiously, David and Nathan Zellner bill themselves as “The Zellner Brothers.” It offhandedly suggests Joel and Ethan Coen before Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, a film that deliberately suggests the work of the Coens, even begins. Opening on a fuzzy, out-of-focus title card reading, in part, “This is a true story,” the film carefully builds its core mystery. The titular sullen twentysomething (Rinko Kikuchi) works days as a secretary in Tokyo: showing up late, less perky than her colleagues, ritually spitting in her boss’s tea. In her own time, she follows arcane maps to secret caves, retrieving buried VHS tapes. Those tapes contain a secret, an oblique chart pointing to a hidden treasure.

No use belaboring it: Kumiko is looking for the buried briefcase in the Coens’ Fargo, the one a bloodied Steve Buscemi buries along a North Dakota highway, marked with a red ice scraper. Convinced she’s located the “treasure,” Kumiko tearfully bids goodbye to her pet bunny rabbit, steals her boss’s corporate credit card, and heads to Minnesota, en route to Fargo.